Date: 24th June 2010
   By Srinivas

Embedded board maker Kontron focuses on India with a broader prospect

The Germany based high reliability embedded board maker Kontron has already built up its sales force in all the key areas of India's embedded board market which include Mumbai-Pune zone, Bangalore-Chennai, the north cluster, and as well as Hyderabad. The key market for Kontron in India is Military/Aerospace and telecom but has presence in all the major areas of embedded computer boards. Ulrich Gehrmann, CEO of Kontron was in India a few days back to strengthen its relationship with its partners and to look into the possibilities of expanding development center as well as manufacturing option in India. Kontron has opened repair center in Bangalore to serve its growing customers. This writer in a candid interaction with Ulrich Gehrmann finds Kontron has highly positive outlook on the Indian market and the design resources.

He praises India's education system, ethical thinking and the vibrant democracy and also the popular use of English language. He sees there is a lot of market in India still to be explored, and his sales team confident of achieving annual double-digit sales growth in India. Kontron says it is the number one embedded board supplier in the world. In India, they have not done any formal survey, Kontron is easily one among the top three suppliers in most of the application areas.

To reduce the manufacturing cost of its boards, Kontron has a manufacturing facility in Malaysia where the manufacturing cost is comparable to Taiwan and China. Kontron is also pondering about the possibility of installing a manufacturing plant in India. But Kontron is sure to leverage India's software and system integration capabilities, and is sure to invest in this area. The process has already started.

As per Kontron, the Indian embedded board customers are looking for long-term support in terms of product life cycle. When asked about the product cost, he laughs and says not really the product cost. Kontron is rated good in providing life-cycle support even after the board is sold 10 years back.

When asked about embedded boards for emerging markets like solar and electric driven automotives, Ulrich said Kontron's boards are designed to last longer and consume low power. Its boards are used in smart energy saving applications. For automotive market, Kontron has developed few prototypes and is working with companies like BMW.

On the technology question of ARM and Intel architecture adaptation in embedded systems, he says processor architectures from both Intel and ARM are required depending on the application. He also sees FPGAs playing greater role in embedded systems boards.

Ulrich Gehrmann and his team in India works in a open culture where much of the information is shared. He feels that is key strength of Kontron.